ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[panamaniac]

The period of time between a BRT and a transition to LRT is so long that there seems to me to be no significant downside in proceeding that way.

[Canard]

If you want to get from one side of Uptown to the other, and Willis and Erb/Caroline are closed, you pretty much need to use William or Union, right?

I'm not sure - I guess I hadn't thought about that particular scenario. In looking at Google Maps, I see that yes, it would make things difficult. So I would say that the email sent out a few days ago that stated that they would not start construction at Erb/Caroline until Union/King was reopened is probably valid (and a good idea).

I was going to say that there isn't anything *really* wrong with a full BRT system. But talking about building BRT and transitioning to LRT in the future doesn't make any sense to me. You're going to end up paying so much more if you go that route.

...as Ottawa is discovering now. Although they got a good 30-years or whatever out of their BRT, building ridership first, I suppose.

[JoeKW]

If you're at the point where a BRT is heavily used and you need the capacity of an LRT wouldn't it be virtually impossible to shut down the system for 2 years to turn it into an LRT?

[panamaniac]

If you're at the point where a BRT is heavily used and you need the capacity of an LRT wouldn't it be virtually impossible to shut down the system for 2 years to turn it into an LRT?

Others will know better than me, but there's this clever thing known as "detours"....

[Canard]

That assumes being able to dump a crapload of buses, which used to be able to zip along dedicated RoW's unimpeded, onto city streets which are already jam-packed. Again, as Ottawa is discovering! Very painful process.

[panamaniac]

We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are difficult.

I guess ten years from now, we'll know who got it right - K-W or London.

[Canard]

I suspect we'd have to fast-forward about 35 years to see the true answer to that - when London's BRT is at capacity, and has to be replaced/upgraded to Light Rail (or some other technology). But it may well enough have completely revitalized London by that time, thus achieving its initial goal for a slightly lower price - who knows! We'll have the Ontario variety pack of transit solutions (minus Monorail, sadly) - and will get to see which ones work best over the next few decades.

Thankfully, none of Ontario's proposed systems are streetcars. The US is on this huge streetcar kick right now - off the top of my head, Atlanta, Cinci, Kansas City, DC... the KC system opens next weekend; I'll be riding it sometime this summer. I don't like that they're all operating in traffic lanes. The DC streetcar route takes 27 minutes, and it takes 26 minutes to walk it. A dismal failure.

[Pheidippides]

Kind of seems like the expressway debate of decades ago playing out again.

[Pheidippides]

Had the surreal experience of following the pedestrian detour along Charles and suddenly finding myself on the Victoria Park platform this morning:
   

Getting more real by the day!

[Canard]

Yes! This is one of the more interesting stations as far as shoehorning it in, because the platform will actually be the sidewalk, too.

[Canard]

Then, the mayor spoke about a situation with gates.

I didn't get an entirely clear picture but it seems there's a chance that strict rule interpretation is pushing us towards pedestrian gates for where ION is crossing sidewalks. So that would be on King near the town square, and then at the Caroline diagonal. There's a scenario the mayor mentioned where as many as 16 gate arms could be required at Caroline and Erb, firing off every three minutes. Bananas.

I've been thinking about this almost constantly since reading your post, and I just can't add up enough gates to come up with 16.

I always get confused on the Region's Rapid Transit site, since there are a couple of different versions of maps out, but only this one under the Archived Maps section shows the proposed crossing light/bell/arm locations, from way back at the conceptual stage (meaning, they were at least thinking about details like this, and the gauntlet tracks, etc...). It only shows 3:

   

For comparison, here is a more up-to-date version of this same area, from the Project Agreement documents (which, confusingly, are also available under the Maps/Functional Design Plans section), but unfortunately these do not outline the locations of light/bell/arms:

   

About the highest number of combined arms (for both automobile lanes and sidewalks) is around 10 or 11, and that's being quite liberal with them. Any ideas or theories on where the other arms Mayor D. J. was mentioning might be coming from?

[KevinL]

Yes!  This is one of the more interesting stations as far as shoehorning it in, because the platform will actually be the sidewalk, too.

Looking forward to the completion of the Queen, City Hall, and Central Station platforms for the same experience.

[notmyfriends]

Waterloo wants public input on plans for LRT station areas

http://www.therecord.com/news-story/6523...ion-areas/

A public open house is scheduled for May 12 from 3:30 to 7 p.m. at the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex. A presentation will be made at 5 p.m. The draft station area plans are available online at http://www.waterloo.ca/lightrailtransit

[Canard]

I know it's a minor gripe, but I really hate that the graphic in that URL is from about 6 years ago.  That station design is several iterations old, and isn't even close to what the design will actually be.

Also, it's not exactly clear to me what these "Station area planing" consultations are supposed to result in - what is the end hope here? Development is already happening on its own along the line. Is this something different from the CTS (I think that was the acronym) group that had an office in Kitchener City Hall a few years ago?

[Coke6pk]

I know it's a minor gripe, but I really hate that the graphic in that URL is from about 6 years ago.  That station design is several iterations old, and isn't even close to what the design will actually be.

Also, it's not exactly clear to me what these "Station area planing" consultations are supposed to result in - what is the end hope here?  Development is already happening on its own along the line.  Is this something different from the CTS (I think that was the acronym) group that had an office in Kitchener City Hall a few years ago?

Speaking of gripes... why do we have a bus on the LRT route?